Enabling an electrical revolution using smart apparent energy meters tariffs

摘要

Smart Grids are in use in the HT sector. But the benefit of Smart Grids can only be maximized through its effective extension to the LT sector. Since LT represents the base of the pyramid with its large number of small consumers, such an implementation poses a big challenge, particularly due to the additional cost of smart technologies. On the other hand, the high amount of aggregate technical and commercial (ATC) losses in the LT Power Sector offers an elegant scope for exploitation of the smart technologies in the LT. The high cost of anti-tamper hardware components and MRI used in static tamper resistant meters that serve little purpose could be diverted towards setting up of an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) instead. This would then result in a fail proof anti-tamper smart network that would prove to be an asset for deploying various demand side management concepts. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of smart LT apparent energy meters for effective reduction in ATC losses. The technical component is reduced through the implementation of a fair apparent energy based tariff. This is an elegant single parameter (unit kVAh) based tariff that incorporates an embedded power factor based discount mechanism to offer a Win-Win solution, where consumers can avail discounts in their electricity bills while the utilities minimize their line losses through reduction in harmonics and inductive loads. Its successful pilot implementation at Anand, Gujarat is covered in this paper. The use of smart meters to eliminate pilferage of energy from overhead LT lines is also covered in this paper.